"I love you."

"Ah..." Írissë, lying on her side and gazing at half-seen shapes of bedroom furniture cast into shadow by Telperion waning many miles away, wrinkles her nose and shifts uncomfortably. The arm flung over her waist suddenly feels too heavy, too hot, and she wants it gone. Tyelkormo always knows how to say exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.

"I do," he insists, half-sitting up and craning his neck to try and see her face, the pale waves of hair spilling over his shoulders and chest almost silver in the light filtering in through the window at his back. Perhaps he thinks she's testing him, that he should be more insistent and prove to her that he means what he's saying. Írissë wants none of it, pushing his arm off her and pulling their shared blanket higher instead, almost to her chin. Perhaps he'll get the message and shut up, go to sleep and stop spoiling their night together. It's been months since their last one, and who knows when the chance for another will come?

"You don't love me?"

Tyelkormo has never been very good at taking a hint.

"Of course I do," she says shortly, giving up her attempt at sleep and sitting up to face him. The blanket falls to her waist but she makes no attempt to retrieve it and cover herself. It's nothing he hasn't seen already this night, and from the way he's now sitting cross-legged on the bed and staring at her with that intent, slightly hurt expression on his face she doesn't think there's much chance he'll get distracted by the sight. If there was a chance she might even try and capitalise on it, just to put off having this conversation. "I love you, and I love Maitimo and Makalaurë and Findaráto and Artanis," she notices the corners of his mouth pull back into a sneer at that, "and all our other cousins."

"Come on, you know I don't mean like that. I mean, well..." he looks down to indicate his naked body and shrugs. "You don't do this with the rest of them, do you?"

"And this is what love is to you? I might have known!" She bites back a laugh, not wanting to hurt him too badly. For all that he has terrible timing and the inability to realise when to close his mouth and stop talking, he's still her favourite cousin and she does love him. Only not quite in the way that he wants her to, she thinks, or at least not yet. Perhaps never. "And I fail to see how what Artanis and I do in our spare time is any business of yours, Tyelko."

"Urgh..." Now it's Tyelkormo's turn to give in to that same flash of exasperation that she was feeling before, flopping over onto his back and staring at the ceiling for a moment before sitting up again just as quickly and leaning in closer, that strangely intent look never leaving his eyes. "Now you're making up stories to tease me. Don't, Írissë, I'm trying to be serious here. I love you, and not like a cousin, like-"

"- like Findekáno and Maitimo do?"

"-like more than a cousin," he struggles on gamely, doing his best to ignore the way she's smiling at him and Írissë has to feel sorry for him despite herself. He's trying so hard, even if she doesn't want him to. "And with everything that's been happening recently... your family, mine... we should do something to fix it." He lifts his chin, fixes her with those pale eyes of his that glitter in Telperion's light like mithril shards and then narrows them in determination. It's obvious that he's been thinking about this for quite some time before coming to a decision. "We should get married."

So much for feeling sorry for him. Írissë barely even feels her mouth drop open as she gapes at him, completely at a loss for words for a few long moments before they all come at once. "So then, your father and mine are at one another's throats. Admittedly, more your father than mine; uncle Fëanáro suspects my father is plotting and scheming who-knows-what against him, planning to usurp his place and steal all of grandfather's love and affection. My father is rapidly coming to the end of his patience and can only deny uncle's accusations and laugh off his insults for so long before his own standing starts to become diminished. Your parents are barely talking anymore - don't look at me like that, everyone in Tirion knows it - and on the rare occasions your father shows his face in the city he walks around with a black scowl like a thunderstorm and glares at anyone he so much as suspects of being sympathetic to my father or uncle Arafinwë. Grandfather is at his wits' end with all of us. And this, Turcafinwë Tyelkormo Fëanárion, this is your solution?"

"...Yes?" Perhaps the way she doesn't laugh, the way she's looking at him, waiting silently to hear what he has to say, gives him the courage to continue. She sees the movement of his throat as he swallows, and then he's sitting forward again and taking both her hands between his own. She's never thought of her hands as being particularly small or delicate, but Tyelko's hands swallow them up so easily and they disappear from view. "It's... it's a gesture," he starts slowly, seemingly uncertain of whether she's going to come out with another barb to prick him with. "It's symbolic, it shows that the houses of Fëanáro and Nolofinwë are willing and able to put aside the differences of their founders and forge their own peace together. It's a show of unity, that the House of Fëanáro can bind itself to your house and strengthen it; that the House of Nolofinwë can bind itself to my house and seek to support, not to supplant. Father will be furious - and your father as well, I'm sure - but grandfather will understand and he'll take our side. It won't be his first experience of unconventional marriage arrangements," Tyelkormo adds with the lopsided grin that she's always loved seeing on him. "And besides, as I said before... I love you, Írissë. And I think that you love me, only you don't want to admit it and give me a big head."

"Bigger than the one you already have?" Írissë asks, and they both laugh under their breath, mindful of the sleeping occupants of the rooms around them. Maitimo next door would understand and sympathise, but if Fëanáro were to catch wind of this...

"You've certainly thought this through..." Írissë admits slowly, but for all Tyelkormo's idealistic notions there's one thing he hasn't thought of. Though she hates to do it, though she hates the thought of hurting him, she owes it to him to be honest and to deal the blow as softly as possible. Now it's her turn to shift forward, kicking the blanket aside and moving into his space. She only has to exert the smallest pull for him to let go of her hands - while he always moves to protect and enfold her without thinking, he'll also move back to give her her freedom and allow her to stand on her own feet as soon as he understands what she wants to do. She adores that about him, and that only makes this harder. Cupping his face in both her hands, she smooths a golden lock of hair behind his ear. Her voice is barely above a whisper. "But what you haven't considered is that even if I do love you... I don't want to marry you."

Tyelkormo's mouth opens but no words come out. He frowns, closes his mouth, opens it, tries again. Still nothing. Írissë waits.

"Why not?" he manages at last, and it seems that he can't quite believe the sounds coming from his own mouth, let alone hers. In all his planning of this conversation, it is clear that he never imagined it going this way. "What's wrong with me? You just said that you love me, and-"

"Shh," She can't listen to him stammering his confusion into the still night air and she presses her fingers to his lips to quieten him. "There's nothing wrong with you, Tyelko, and any maid would be proud to be your wife."

"So then?"

"So then I don't want to be anyone's wife," she tells him with a shake of her head, taking her fingers from his mouth only to replace them with her lips as she kisses him. "But least of all yours. I love you when we hunt, when we disappear from the world and spend weeks in the woods, filthy and hungry and bruised and then finally satisfied, and no-one knows where we go but the two of us. I love you when we visit the taverns and you get falling-down drunk and decide to beat the living daylights out of anyone you think has spoken rudely towards me... or when I get falling-down drunk and you don't complain when I throw up on your favourite tunic," she shoots him a sharp little smile as she sees his nonplussed expression: he'd thought she didn't remember that, and for pride's sake she had pretended not to until now. "I love you when you roll your eyes at me and pull faces during formal dinners when my father and yours are at each other's throats... and the way you try to play innocent when Curvo notices you doing it. I love you because you make me feel free," she finishes, shaking her head softly as she looks into his eyes and sees just how little he understands of what she's saying. "If I were your wife, I would no longer have any of that. I'd be like aunt Eärwen, strapped into a corset of propriety and tradition and kept behind the doors of your house, chained in place with a gaggle of golden-haired children at my knee. Is that how you want to see me?"

"You wouldn't," Tyelkormo says roughly, "you'd be Írissë: my wife, yes, but my equal and nothing else would change from how it is now. Nothing, I promise... look at my mother," he brightens up suddenly, as though he's happened upon a winning argument. "She's had seven of us, and yet the last thing you'd say is that she's simply my father's shadow. She paints, she sculpts, she travels where she will and she fights with my father like blazes, you're right..." he admits with a tiny wince, "she lives her life just as she did before she married him. It would be just the same with us."

"Now you're comparing me with your mother? Ah, Tyelko..." Írissë can't help but laugh softly, shaking her head and fixing him with a sidelong look that's both amused and exasperated. "You really do know how to spoil an intimate moment, don't you? How is it that you're so popular with the girls of Tirion, again?"

"I'm obscenely good-looking," Tyelkormo says shortly, not in the mood for drawing out jokes. "Will you consider it, at least? Everything I've said here tonight... particularly the part where I confessed how I truly feel about you?"

"I'll consider it, but my answer won't change," Írissë shakes her head. She almost wants to feel badly for her cousin, for the way his shoulders sag and that fair face clouds over. She should say something to comfort him, but at the same time she will not lie to him. "It's as I told you: I don't want to be anyone's wife. If I did... if I ever changed my mind, Tyelko, then there would be no question about it at all." She smiles at him, then reaches out to push him gently down onto the bed and clamber on top of him. "There's no-one I would rather have as my husband than you."

"Swear it," Tyelkormo's face is oddly open and defenceless as he looks up at her from the mountain of pillows he prefers to sleep with whenever he has the luxury of sleeping indoors. "Swear it."

"What?"

"Swear to me," he insists, reaching up and running his fingers over the lines of her hips, her stomach. "Swear that if... that when you change your mind, you'll marry me. No-one else but me."

And what harm can it do, Írissë wonders, looking down at her cousin's face; his wide eyes, the firm set of his mouth before she bends down to cover it with her own and whisper the words against his lips. Such a little thing, to lift his spirits now and yet also the truth: if a husband is what her fate has in store for her, she cannot imagine being bound to any other than him. "I swear, Tyelko, I swear."